Italian Farmstay: Agriturismo Holiday in Tuscany

We had a perfect agriturismo holiday in Tuscany. This post presents our farm stay near Pienza and the beautiful Tuscan scenery in the area south of Siena.

An agriturismo holiday in Tuscany had been in my dreams and then there was a chance to take a short break in May. We bought flights to Italy, rented a car and a booked a room in a Tuscan farmhouse.

This is what the farmhouse looked like.

We chose to stay right in the middle of Tuscany, south of Siena and close to Pienza, Montalcino and Montepulciano. The location of our agriturismo is marked on the map.

Agriturismo Holiday in Tuscany: the Map

Zooming in the map you can see what the area is like. It is very typical Tuscany with rolling green hills and hilltop villages, Italian countryside at its best.

In addition to natural beauty the area south of Siena offers a lot to see and you can explore the area by foot, bike or car.

Our Agriturismo near Pienza

Booking an Agriturismo in Tuscany

Finding an agriturismo turned out to be a pretty tough job. I had my dream what the farm house should look like. There would have to be a pool and of course a garden, and a good breakfast. In addition we wanted to have bikes.

There were websites listing farmhouses so you could get in touch with the owners. Most of the best websites were made for Italian visitors and not all matching agriturismos had an online booking option. To get understood I had to contact farm house owners in Italian since English is not really spoken in the Italian countryside.

Agriturismo Casalpiano in Pienza

After some efforts I finally found my dream accommodation that you can see in this post. We chose Agriturismo Casalpiano in Pienza.

The agriturismo was near Pienza, only 6 km downhill from there. In addition to Pienza there where many other postcard-pretty hilltop towns at a close distance, such as Montepulciano, Montalcino and Monticchiello.

However our point not only was to visit hilltop towns but to explore the famous Tuscan countryside as a whole – and to get that feeling you need to stay at an agriturismo.

We soon noticed we had made a good choice for our Agriturismo holiday in Tuscany. Casalpiano turned out to be a living farm with wine and olive oil production. There was lots of work being done all the time.

La Famiglia Grande

The three generations that were living on the farm stay were all so kind and friendly. They were curious about us who came from the far north. Discussing with them was a mixture of Italian, Spanish and English and lots of talking with our hands was needed. But there definitely were no problems at all, we completely understood each other.

The whole famiglia grande was all sitting in the breakfast room and waiting for us to come and they stayed there as long we sat there. There were practically no other guests since they only had two guest rooms. Those we saw there were locals from Italy and regular visitors to the farmhouse.

Our room was in the little side building and faced to the pool and the garden. Perfect! Here you can see our agriturismo near Pienza from the road.

This is their road sign that was hand-made.

How did we find this place? I found it on an Italian website but noticed afterwards that it can be booked on booking.com as well.

Day Trips from our Tuscan Agriturismo

On our agriturismo holiday in Tuscany we never got get tired of the views and the farmhouse atmosphere with magnific Italian breakfasts and dinners was magnific. But as we we also needed some physical activity we made short day trips to the Tuscan countryside around us.

On the first day we decided to go and explore the vineyards north of our agriturismo. We took a vineyard walk.

Vineyard Walk

We took the small country road north and started walking. The road winded up to the hill.

Typical Tuscan poppy lined roads are just as pretty as you can imagine. We walked past vineyards and stopped and talked with wine growers and their grandmothers and families.

In between there were meadows and steep hills up and down.

A big white dog started following us at some point and came with us all the way to Pienza where we left him on church stairs on the market place.

In these pictures you can see Pienza in the background.

That was a good walk, more than 15 km altogether. As we stopped all the time we almost spent the whole day. At the end we stayed a long time in Pienza and had a late lunch before walking the last 6 km downhill to our agriturismo.

Some more photos of Tuscan vineyards in the spring.

Tuscany is an ideal area for this kind of short walks. Everything looks wonderful in the spring and it must be as pretty in the autumn as well – when everything that’s green in these photos has turned brown and yellow.

Look at the green landscape! So this was the first day trip we made and the next one was a walking-trip too.

Walk to Monticchiello

The next day we only took a short walk, this time towards south. We walked to the nearby village of Monticchiello. Montichiello was on the top of the hill closest to the farmhouse and we could see the town from our room window.

We took the winding country road south and arrived after just an 1,5 km easy walk uphill at Monticchiello.

On the way to Monticchiello we saw another farmhouse, Agriturismo Santa Maria. It looked very much like the one we stayed at and they too had a hand made road sign.

Monticchiello

Monticchiello has a defence wall around it and many of the streets within the walls are very very narrow. We walked up and down the narrow lanes.

It was a sunny, sleepy day and there were not many locals around. It was quiet and peaceful. Flower pots and wash hanging everywhere.

After we had seen enough or Monticchiello it was time to head back to our agriturismo. We left Monticchiello through this narrow town gate.

Now we had been walking on two days., what about taking the car the next day?

Pienza

The next day was a driving day with our rental Fiat and we toured three nearby hilltop towns during that day: Montepulciano, Montalcino and Pienza. All of them are like from a fairytale. Here’s a short photo story on Pienza.

Pienza was the place where we mainly went for dinner so we frequently visited this hilltop town. We had some wonderful Italian dinners in small Pienza trattorias.

Pienza is very pretty and you can spend long times just looking at all small details. l especially liked these tile roofs.

We went to Pienza market place where we had left the white dog some days ago. We tried to find him but he had gone back home to the vineyard.

Here’s a street view with typical Pienza townhouses and below it Tuscan scenery seen from Pienza city walls.

Bike Trip to Bagno Vignoni

Our agriturismo had bikes for the guests and the next day became a Tuscany by bike day.

We made a loop trip to the ancient spa town of Bagno Vignoni. That was about 15 km one way from where we stayed. It was partly small gravel roads and partly main roads like the road Siena to Rome. Biking is a great way to see Tuscany but try to avoid big main roads if you can.

Bagno Vignoni

Bagno Vignoni is a small medieval spa village with a big stone pool in the middle of the piazza.

The hot stone pool has been used for healing treatmens for centuries. Its sulphurous water comes from an underfround volcano.

It was first used by the Romans and it’s been used as a public pool after that. Today it’s no more possible to swim here but the Bagno is nice to look at.

Bagno Vignoni is an exceptional town, it’s in a forest, not in the middle of open fields. There are still some of the old aqueducts from the Roman time.

Since this small village is a popular destination for tourists there are a few restaurants.

We sat here for a while. Antipasti and a glass of vino rosso helped us make our way back to the agriturismo.

After the thick forest of the Bagno Vignoni area we enjoyed this kind of green landscape.

The biking day was the last day on our agriturismo holiday in Tuscany. The days had passed quickly and it was time to say goodbye, arrivederci. Hope to be back one day!